


Sunrise

by OhForAMuseOfFire



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Deserved Better, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Grief/Mourning, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22164082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhForAMuseOfFire/pseuds/OhForAMuseOfFire
Summary: A Force Dyad is not so easily broken. When Ben Solo vanishes after the showdown on Exegol Rey is near senseless with grief and rage and the Force isn't very happy about it either. Determined to rewrite the ending of her story she will not stop until she brings him back.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	1. The End of All Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HixChick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HixChick/gifts).



_The Sith'ari will be free of limits._  
_The Sith'ari will lead the Sith and destroy them._  
_The Sith'ari will raise the Sith from death and make them stronger than before._

_-The Prophecy of the coming of the Sith’ari_

* * *

His smile was like a newly born sun. Exploding into life and shattering all memory of darkness. It was warmth and hope and promise and just so absolutely lovely because it was his.

It was like the first time she felt rain.

The first time she’d flown the Falcon.

The first time she’d felt the Force and known her place in it.

His smile lit a fire in her soul that had been banked and cold for so long. It was so bright it stole all the breath from her lungs. She was powerless to do anything but reach out to hold his face in her hands, just to feel that he was really there.

She had seen him or the possibility of him, buried in the dark, under all the wrath and self abasement, tiny flashes of this man now kneeling beside her. She’d hoped against all reason that he would drop that terrible, black mantle and come back to her. But she hadn’t known that it would be like this. This bright, unburdened boy with his smile like the sun.

Kissing him was the most natural thing in the world. Like she’d done it a thousand times. Everything about him was familiar. The harsh angles of his face, the softness of his hair, every scar. She knew him. She knew this man. All the pain and rage and self hatred had been hers as much as his. The only thing more powerful had been her desire to take it away from him. And since she couldn’t do that, she kissed him. His lips. Oh she’d write poems about his lips one day and every word would be perfect because that’s what his lips were. Perfect.

If his smile was like the sun then kissing him was like flying straight into it. She hadn’t known there was that much warmth in the entire universe. Then the feel of his hands coming around her to grip her shoulders. Gods above he was so strong. And he was everywhere at once. In her mind, reaching further than she would have thought possible through the Force, sending her wave after wave of gratitude and unfettered, nearly blinding joy. She gasped against his mouth as it hit her. It didn’t seem like it should be possible but the air grew warmer and she fought the urge to cling closer to him. She felt him grab onto that thought and grip her a little tighter in turn. When her wandering mind began to contemplate climbing into his lap the air around them became positively scorching.

She’d felt suddenly shy then and deeply foolish and very, very young. She was unable to hold his gaze for more than a moment before falling into flustered blushes and sighs. To be fair it was a very intense gaze. He stared like he’d never seen her before and really, in a way he hadn’t. There was a softness, a light that hadn’t been there before. Softness was not a word she could ever have associated with Kylo Ren. But it was a softness mixed with something else, something decidedly _not_ soft. The hand that gripped her arm had slowly wound its way to the back of her neck and those very long fingers began to drift into her hair. She felt him fighting his own ungentle thoughts and found herself wondering what might happen if he stopped.

They were lying in a tangled heap, bleeding and broken in the ruins of a Sith temple on a world that was breaking into pieces all around them and she never wanted to leave. She wanted to stay right there, holding his precious face. There was nothing else in all the universe that mattered more than being there with him.

They had always been for each other. It was such an obvious thing to her now she couldn’t understand how she’d never seen it before. But, in his eyes and in his touch and in the warm wave of his thoughts that continued to dance through her own she saw that it was true. This, the two of them here, now, in each others arms was a thing that the Force had intended since the beginning of time.

Palpatine had been right but he’d also been terribly wrong. This dyad, this joining between them had nothing to do with power or a destiny as immortal despots over the known universe. It was a restoration. The healing of a fracture within the Force itself that had been a thousand, thousand years in the making.

How many millions had died? Planets had been destroyed, whole civilizations wiped out, in the name of this epic war between the light and the dark because not a single solitary creature in all the vast miles of space understood what the word balance actually meant.

The simplicity of it was so staggering. That all it should take to bring balance to the defining power of all the worlds in the universe was for two people to just be together had to be the greatest cosmic joke of all time. To see the end of so much darkness and chaos and hopelessness and struggle staring straight back at her with a lopsided grin and dirt and blood all over his face, wearing what looked an awful lot like pajamas abruptly became too much to handle. She began to laugh and found she couldn’t stop. Then he was laughing and they were clutching each other and guffawing and gasping for breath.

And then, with the laugh still on his lips, he died.

He died.

And the balance died with him.

His going was not the gentle fading of Luke Skywalker. It was not a passing that left her with a sense of rightness, of a long journey finally ended. It was not even the grief laden fading of his sister, a bright wave of pain that had rippled through the force and caught at her heart like a knife.

The death of Ben Solo was a rending of worlds. Chaos. Black, blinding chaos as he was ripped from her, torn away and the wound that opened was so wide and cold she thought for a moment she had died with him. Would have welcomed it even. It was so fast. He was gone before his head touched the ground. There was no time to pull him back, to hold him to her as he had done when he’d called her back from the dark. Gods it was so, so fast.

He was gone and she had never known pain until that moment. She had been hungry, she had been hurt, she had been lonely but as he vanished into the dark on this dead world the bond that had burned between them for years snapped and she was truly alone. Without thinking she reached for him, blindly struggling to touch his mind with hers, looking for anything, any sign that he was still somewhere, anywhere. But there was nothing. The blinding red rage that had woken her at night, the grief, the night terrors, she would have taken any of it, all of it. Every childish tantrum, every flashback to that horrible moment on Starkiller, every recollection of every death he meted out. She would have taken every single one if it meant he was still with her.

Nothing. Nothing for her to mourn or kiss goodbye. Only a pile of empty clothes covered in blood and sweat for her to clutch against her chest as the first tears came. Silent and cold like the space that had opened inside her. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs to make sound. This gaping hole that would never be filled again. The knowledge that she was well and truly alone and always would be weighed down on her so suddenly and strongly she thought, just for a moment, that it would be a comfort to die too just to feel it lifted.

It was the wrongness of it that overwhelmed her. That he should be gone and she be left alone was categorically and irrevocably wrong. The despair that welled now inside her, boiling and churning like a maelstrom in the pit of her stomach was the despair of the Force itself. The universe calling out in agony as the realization of a millennia of longing crumbled to dust in the span of a heartbeat.

Jannah and Finn found her there, rocking and keening like a mad creature with a black bundle in her arms that she refused to let go of. She couldn’t seem to make herself stop screaming. She could see Finn shouting at her, she was dimly aware of his arms going around her but she couldn’t feel anything. Only the black void yawning inside her, this gaping, aching wound that ate her screams and her tears but would never be filled if she lived ten thousand years.

Exhaustion and shock won out in the end and she passed, mercifully, into unconsciousness.

* * *

She was spared those heartbreaking lies that are sometimes given to the grieving. There was no moment of peace where all was right with the universe before the crushing reality invaded again. She woke to emptiness. Not darkness and not light. Nothinginess. Which was, in its way, worse than the pain.

The pain at least carried the memory of joy.

She spent the first week silent. Her friends were at a loss to help her. Finn sat with her for hours and Rose brought endless cups of caf and bowls of soup that sat on the table untouched unless they spooned it into her mouth. She let them. There was a part of her that knew she needed to survive this but a larger part that couldn’t seem to find the strength on her own.

She slept without dreaming. That too was somehow worse. She might see him in her dreams but apparently the universe was determined to deny her even that cold comfort.

She woke one night to the sound of Poe’s voice. He was reading to her. Her mind wouldn’t put the words together at first so she simply listened to the gentle rising and falling of his voice. Gradually it came to her that they were children’s bedtime stories. A princess held captive by a Clawdite who’s ever changing face nearly drove the knight sent to rescue her to madness. A clever Snivvian who fooled a conniving Hut into giving up his treasure barge for a bag of sand. She let herself drift in and out on his voice. Who knew that the General of the Resistance had a penchant for fairy tales?

On the morning of the eighth day she woke up and stayed awake. She was alone in a clean, quiet room and the sun was shining through the window. She was alive and Ben Solo was dead and this was unacceptable.

So she would bring him back.


	2. A Parting of the Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone who has spent so much of their life alone knows the value of saying goodbye to the people who love her.

“Rey.”

He put a period at the end of it in that annoying way he had. Poe liked to lead conversations the way he led everything else.

“Poe.” 

There, she could do it too. 

But, even as she said it she knew she wasn’t being fair. He massaged the bridge of his nose with his fingertips in a manner so like Leia it was uncanny. He’d never admit it, would probably argue with you for days about it, but she was the model on which he based so much of what he did in the day to day running of this new, uncharted territory. You saw it in the little things. Even this conversation ran counter to the “old” Poe who would have had it out with her in the middle of the mess hall with an audience of a hundred wide eyed recruits. There would have been hand waving and probably a thrown plate or two. “New” Poe had knocked politely at her door. He’d even waited for her to open it.

He was harder to argue with like this. He was being far too rational and kind. If war did strange and terrible things to people apparently winning them apparently did even stranger. Granted what she wanted to do did sound insane. Even if one believed in every Jedi legend ever told it sounded insane. 

“I really am trying to understand. You know that right?” 

It fit him so well. Responsibility. If she hadn’t watched it happening, that shift from devil may care, shoot first and ask questions later to a seasoned, and war weary leader who would do anything he could to avoid sending a single fighter into battle, she’d never have believed it possible. He was _good_ at this.

“Rey? Have you heard anything I’m saying?”

“Yes.” she blinked and shook her head. “I’m sorry I was thinking that it’s good to see you’ve found your place.”

She waited for a quip about Jedi poetry or at the very least a sardonic laugh. Instead he sat down in the only chair in the room and looked out the window into the late afternoon sunshine. He didn’t say a word for several minutes. She could practically feel him thinking, trying to come up with arguments or some perfectly articulated one liner that would make her see reason. He was afraid. They’d never be close, not like she and Finn were, but she couldn’t help but love him a little for that. It was still such a foreign thing, to have people worry for her, feel afraid that something might happen to her. 

There was a rustling outside and a zymod suddenly appeared, balanced on a great leafy branch that dangled right outside the window. Its long pink tongue darted out to catch an insect and then it skittered away turning from green to dark brown as it ran. Oh to blend in like that. To simply change appearance to suit whatever circumstance she found herself in. For the briefest of moments she wondered if it might be possible to stay. To tramp down the dark, or try to learn to live with it, and carve out something like a life with these people who loved her.

“Is that what this is?” he asked, “you trying to find your place in all this?” 

He sounded so tired. She wondered how often he found time to sleep between the meetings and the endless flood of communications from every system in the galaxy. Leia’s deathbed promotion had made him the most important, sought after personage in this barely formed Republic. She felt incredibly guilty to be adding to an already immeasurable list of troubles. 

“Yes, partly” was all she said. What else was there to say? She couldn’t hope to make him understand the depth of what had happened to her. To both of them. She also couldn’t ask him to let her go out into some great unknown to bring back someone who, to him, was little better than a monster from one of his fairy tales. 

“I can’t tell you what I’m doing because I don’t fully understand it myself.” she tried again, “I can only tell you that it came to me when I woke up and you were reading to me.”

“Rey, those were kids stories! It was a book my mom used to read to me when I was little. The medics said it would help if you heard a familiar voice and it was just lying around my room!”

“Please listen to me.” She sat down on the bed so she could look him in the eye, “What I mean is it made me realize that my part in this story isn’t over yet. Something happened to me on Exegol, something I can’t explain yet, and then it was taken away and I -”

She drew in a deep breath as that hideous, gnawing grief began to build again. Forming this plan, however tenuous it was, had been keeping it at bay as though it were a living thing that could be reasoned with. It was always there, that great wall of empty darkness where perfect balance had been for the briefest of moments. But it seemed as though the knowledge that she was setting out to heal the rift made it more bearable. 

_I’m coming. I promise I’m coming as fast as I can._

She didn’t know who or what she was talking to. She sent the thought out into that great darkness and heard nothing in response but she felt the pain subside,felt herself regaining control. 

Poe was watching her with undisguised fear. He looked like he was seconds away from vaulting from the room and calling for a medical droid or at the very least for Rose or Finn. But when she reached out her hand he took it and sat down again.

“I’m only going to Ach-to” she said gently. “It’s as much for a break as it is for anything else. I need some time to myself, some time to try to work out -”

“What your place is in all this, yeah I get it.”

And she could see that he did. In the time they’d known each other they’d probably spent more of it bickering than doing anything else, but she could see the depth of his affection for her in the warmth of the sad, slow smile that was spreading across his face.

“General to Jedi I give you permission to take a brief period of leave for recuperative purposes.” He’d adopted that superior tone that at any other time would have started a real argument, but he dropped it when he added “Friend to friend? Be safe and come back to us.”

Without thinking she jumped to her feet and threw her arms around him. His momentary surprise gave way quickly to a hard embrace that nearly took her breath away.

“Also there is no _way_ I’m gonna be the one to tell Finn about this. That’s on you.”

She laughed into his shoulder and let herself relax for just a moment, savoring this friendship, this tiny sliver of peace. He broke away from her and moved awkwardly to the door, tripping over books and the tools she’d been organizing. 

“And clean this place up!” he threw over his shoulder. The spanner she Force flung at his head clanked harmlessly against the door frame as he disappeared down the hall laughing. Some things, it seemed, would never change. For that she was grateful.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Telling Finn ended up being easier than she’d anticipated. There were things they’d understood about each other from the moment they’d met that had never needed words. Like called to like. Need to need. They’d been each other’s first true friendship after a lifetime of loneliness. That almost instantaneous bond hadn’t been affected by time or distance. He would always be that person she might not see for months or even years and the second they were together again it would be as if no time had passed at all. He understood that longing for purpose, for a place in the wider world that burned in her because he had it too. 

The difference now was that he’d found his. With the discovery of a whole colony of defected troopers whose experiences were nearly identical to his own he had living, breathing confirmation that he wasn’t alone in the universe. Jannah and her friends had renewed his determination to reconnect with the boy he’d once been, to learn his own story. 

All of them knew the odds of finding their families were not great in such a turbulent time but he’d already begun to reach out to other planets. Every meeting Poe held with representatives from other worlds that wanted to discuss joining the new fledgling government now included a broadcast, recorded by Finn, for them to take home asking any who had lost children to the First Order to reach out. A trickle of cautious missives had gradually grown to a torrent and that had become a wave so huge he now had his own office in one of the unused storage buildings and a “staff” of five former troopers who helped him weed through the transmissions and sometimes handwritten letters that seemed to come in at all hours. 

She found him there, alone for once. He’d actually fallen asleep at his console and was actively drooling all over the keyboard. She allowed herself the pleasure of watching him for a moment. There was a nervous energy running all through him even in sleep. Like his body was perpetually tensed for an invasion of enemy combatants or giggly young women looking for the great hero of the resistance. He’d be alright against an invasion of Storm Troopers. Rose would take care of any over zealous admirers. 

Rose was another reason she knew he’d understand why she had to leave. 

Whatever was between them was very new but it was real. Rey suspected that Finn still couldn’t quite trust himself enough to truly be with Rose, there was still so much he was working out about who he even was. But she’d seen how they looked at each other when they thought no one was watching. 

The coldness began to creep back again. Reaching those ugly, long claws through her stomach, up into her heart. She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. She would not let it take hold, she would _not_. She would not let every thought of friendship and kindness and yes, even love pull her into the depths she’d almost allowed herself to be swallowed by. 

_He_ would expect her to fight.

So she would fight.

Finn sputtered something unintelligible in his sleep that called her back from the precipice and its clawing, cold demons. She shook herself and crept up beside him not wanting to wake him too abruptly. He was a hard sleeper but he came up swinging if you didn’t watch what you were doing. 

Not this time though. This time his eyes fluttered open and he smiled as though he’d been waiting for her forever and it was about damn time she’d showed up. It was a smile that always demanded one in return. 

“You’re leaving aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question because clearly he already knew. She sat down on the ground beside his chair and rested her head against his leg. Being physically affectionate was still such a strange, foreign territory but she needed to feel him there. There was nothing romantic about it, but it was necessary to her now, this physical contact with other people. 

“Your braids are all kinds of messed up.” he snorted, tugging at her hair, managing to finally free it from the tangled mess she’d made of it and patiently settling down to rebraid it. 

“I’m still not clear on where you learned to do this.” 

“Little known fact about the First Order. We’re all fully qualified beauticians. Don’t tell anybody though. Got a rep to maintain.”

They sat in companionable silence. Finally he looped the last braid into an elaborate but functional style that was more than a little reminiscent of the late general’s, which they both knew would be an utter mess before an hour had gone by. 

“Sometimes I think I remember seeing my mother or, I don’t know _somebody_ doing this.” He said as he made a final adjustment. “It’s nothing concrete or anything but it’s almost like a memory. Like my fingers remember how to do it even if I don’t.”

She heard the longing in his voice. It was so much like her own. He’d had it too at some point even if he couldn’t remember names or faces. He’d had a family, people who loved him and took care of him. And he’d had it taken away just as she had. That was why this wasn’t as hard for him to understand, this need she had to try to get that connection back. 

“What was he like?” 

“Who?”

“Ben. Ben Solo? What was he like?”

That she hadn’t been prepared for. But, he was trying just as Poe had tried. He wanted her to know that she didn’t have to hide what she was doing, who she was trying to reach. That lack of judgement, so surprising even though really it shouldn’t have been, meant more than she’d ever be able to express to him.

She let herself think of Ben for a moment. She could give herself that. Give herself that smile and that stare and that kiss. It was such a tiny stretch of time but it had revealed so much about who he was. Beautiful yes, that went without saying and she doubted Finn wanted to hear her extoll on that lion’s mane of hair or the dimples, gods those dimples. No she’d keep those for herself. He’d been totally fearless and not a little cocksure, like his father. Smart and quick and gentle and furious in battle, like nothing she’d ever seen before. He’d wielded a lightsaber like he’d been born with one in his hand. His hands had felt so good, his skin had been so much softer than she’d thought it would be. She’d thought about his skin far too much. She’d thought about all of him far too much. He’d been an enemy for so long that when suddenly he wasn’t all she’d wanted was to realize every single thought and fantasy she’d ever let herself entertain. 

But all they’d been given was that one, solitary moment. 

She let the memory of his hands and his smile and his kiss wash over her, steadying herself against the aching that came with it. Then looking up at Finn she said,

“He was good. Ben Solo was good.”

Finn sighed a very Finnish sort of sigh and looked down at her with kind, resigned eyes.

“Well you better go find him then.”

* * *

  
  


She didn’t take the Falcon in the end. It didn’t feel right. If she was going to forge a new path, change the ending of the story then she couldn’t drag the past with her. She also wouldn’t have been able to handle the ship on her own and she couldn’t bring herself to ask Chewie to go with her. He would have said yes, because he was her friend and protector, but there was still too much raw pain there. 

She accepted Poe’s offer of a small scout ship a bit better outfitted than most that he’d acquired through “a set of circumstances that we’re not getting into right now.” When she boarded that evening, alone, everyone having understood that she preferred to leave quietly, she found that the tiny mess was stocked with more than just the typical rations.There were enough Trandoshani flat cakes to feed an army and someone had outfitted her with an absurd amount of Correllian whiskey. Maybe if she got involved in heated negotiations with the caretakers on Ach To it would come in handy?

There was a series of high pitched tweets and mechanical clicks behind her. 

“You provided the whiskey?” 

BB-8 rolled up beside her and confirmed that it had in fact suggested she might need more than one stiff drink before this particular mission was completed.

“I might have known you’d stow away.”

The tweets rose to a higher and very indignant sounding decibel making her laugh and raise her hands in surrender.

“No, I’m glad.” she said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

The tiny droid let out a satisfied sounding whirr and locked itself into place at the consol beside her, taking up the co-pilots position. After verifying for him that yes, his new antennae was lovely and yes perfectly straight, she strapped in, ran through her checklist and with one last deep breath, launched into the gathering night.

_I’m coming, just hang on a little longer._

This time the silence wasn’t quite so deafening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I know not a hell of a whole lot happened here but I found I wanted to check in with Poe and Finn before sending our girl on her journey. I like to think in a perfect world they would understand why she's doing what she's doing. Next time...we arrive at Ach-to and whatever or whoever might be waiting there.

**Author's Note:**

> And so we begin! One of my favorite things about Rey is her determination even in the face of insurmountable odds. She is not going to rest for a moment until she brings Ben back...again. Stay with me and I can almost certainly promise you a very happy ending though it may take some time to get there.


End file.
